Today marks the 50th anniversary of Apple. The Cupertino-based tech titan was started by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne in a small garage in 1976. It was incorporated in 1977.
Dad initially looked at an Apple II for his business, but went with a Commodore PET (the first computer I saw in person). My earliest memory of using an Apple Macintosh computer was during a work experience week at a Cornwall-based design agency that my dad had hired in 1987. Creative work I'd developed was used in GCSE Art.
As an 8-bit Commodore and Sinclair kid, I was instantly smitten with the Macintosh's intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Years earlier, Apple co-founder Jobs visited Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and saw the future...
In college, I used Macs to design newsletters, albums, and video covers for Media Studies. With student friends, we taught ourselves desktop publishing (DTP), a skill I use to this day.
However, it would be another decade before I owned my first Macintosh computer, a Performa 5200. This all-in-one machine enabled me to create my first website in the era of dial-up internet. MacWorld and MacUser magazines were my gotos before the advent of broadband and social media.
Over the decades, I’ve owned the following Apple devices:
Macintosh Performa 5200
iMac DV SE
LCD iMac G4
iPod classic
iMac Intel Core 2 Duo
Apple AirPort Extreme
iPod touch
iPad 3
Apple AirPort Time Capsule
iPad Pro (2016)
Apple TV 4K
iPhone SE (2020)
27-inch iMac (2020)
iPad Pro (M1)
AirPods
iPhone 16 Pro
iPad Pro (M4)
Sir Jony Ive's iconic all-in-one iMac design would become a cultural phenomenon, appearing in everything from Jennifer Lopez's iconic pop promo for If You Had My Love to television series, foreshadowing the Cupertino-based company's rise, Lazarus-like, under the auspices of the then returning co-founder Jobs, from imminent collapse into the consumer electronics giant we know today.
Without the iMac, there would be no iPod, iPhone or iPad and quite possibly no Apple.
What are your Apple memories? Let me know in the comments below.
